Start by UN-installing all the unnecessary Dell junk-programs. Stop indexing Service of the harddisk and set it to disabled.
If there is Norton/Symantec/McAfee junk on it, dump it completely and replace with the free AVG antivirus and Sunbelt Kerio Firewall.
Stop all the automatic updating from programs such as Adobe Reader.
Lower the resolution of your screen. Uninstall all not-needed fonts.
That should keep you out of mischief for a while!

well i reformatted so dell stuff isnt an issue anymore, i have disabled the indexing service but it was apparently needed to update? and i am using NOD32 which apparently uses very little resources, so i'll try turning off the indexing services again and just turn them on as i need them i suppose... is there a major gain by turning that off?

The indexing is for finding text on your harddisk. Unless you need to retrieve documents based on certain words/phrases regularly, this is an absolute waste of resources. This indexing starts the moment you boot, and keeps on for the duration. Stupid really...
There's no program I can think off that needs indexing for updates.
On all the PCs that ever went thru my hands, I turned indexing off, and ALL of them benefited from smoother running.
Get a copy of the latest HijackThis, and post a copy of the scan-file here as an attachment with the .TXT extension (NO Word-doc please).
I can then tell you what else you can turn off.